Talk:Andal Invasion
Question: did the Seven Kingdoms that Aegon I Targaryen encountered exist as far back as the Andal Invasion? I thought they hadn't coalesced into unified kingdoms yet. Dorne, for example, was not unified by the First Men.--The Dragon Demands 03:50, June 24, 2012 (UTC) :No. At the time of the Andal Invasion, Westeros was a patchwork of many smaller kingdoms, with almost every 'modern' lord being a king in their own right. The Seven Kingdoms conquered by Aegon didn't really exist until a century or two before his invasion.--Werthead 16:42, June 25, 2012 (UTC) ::In that case I will remove the mention of the individual kingdoms that Gonzalo84 added, i.e. "Kingdom of the Reach" -- I think the Stark "Kings of the North" were active, but they had a Bolton kingdom to deal with on their eastern border. --The Dragon Demands 17:11, June 25, 2012 (UTC) :::The HBO guide mentions these Kingdoms by the time of the First Men, despite the existance of lesser kingdoms, they existed as political entities, like Bran the Builder reigning as the first King in the North and, the Gardeners as Kings of the Reach and Durran, the FIRST STORM KING. Also, the Boltons were never "kings" despite regularly rebelling. I'll restore the individual kingdoms.--Gonzalo84 20:04, June 25, 2012 (UTC) ::::No. 1 - The Starks, Gardeners, etc. were kings of their own individual kinglet fiefdoms, but they weren't quite that unified yet. Glosses of this history from HBO have obscured this. 2 - Adding in every single faction made the infobox so large that it drastically interfered with the body text. Yes, the Boltons were kings...the books never explicitly used the term for them, but we were told there was a patchwork of hundreds of independent little kingdoms, even if it was only "king of the Dreadfort and the land a day's round surrounding it". The Boltons were subdued by the Starks a thousand years ago, and frequently rebelled...but before that they weren't "rebelling" they were an independent polity.--The Dragon Demands 20:29, June 25, 2012 (UTC) Factual innacuracies House Gardener dates to the time of the First Men. And House Baratheon dates to the War of Conquest, since they were founded by Orys Baratheon. That Blackwoods and Brackens ruled as Kings for a time doesn't mean that they were rulers of their own kingdoms during the Andal invasion. In fact, if you read the books carefully, it is mentioned that the Mudds rules as Kings of Rivers and Hills - which doesn't exclude the existance of lesser kingdoms - but they were defeated by Andal kings - apparently the new Andal Storm Kings - at a later date.--Gonzalo84 20:19, June 25, 2012 (UTC) :I did say that the Gardeners date back to this time as do the Lannisters. The exact statement I made about the Baratheons etc. is that they claim "First Men descent" not that they were ruling; i.e. Orys married the daughter of the last of the Storm Kings, who were First Men. As for the Blackwoods and Brackens being kings *at that specific time*....well it was a migration period lasting many centuries...I don't think its too off base to say the Blackwoods and Brackens used to be kings. My exact phrasing was: ::"Even Great Houses such as House Lannister possess some First Men blood, through the female line, as the Andal invaders married the descendants of the legendary Lann the Clever. Major noble Houses such as House Tully, House Baratheon, House Gardener, and House Tyrell all possess some First Men blood, though they are largely thought of as Andal Houses, particularly because they follow the culture and religion of the Andals." There is nothing factually wrong with this paragraph, or what I said about the Baratheons and Gardeners (well, I think we can functionally deduce that the Gardeners intermarried with the conquerors, as the Hightowers did). I stand by Werthead's decisions.--The Dragon Demands 20:27, June 25, 2012 (UTC) The section of the HBO Viewer's Guide in question says that: "The Night's Watch was founded to man the massive structure's many strongholds. Brandon also erected Winterfell, and began to rule as King in the North as men elsewhere on the continent proclaimed themselves kings. Soon, the people of the Stormlands, the Iron Islands, the Rock, the River and the Hills, the Mountain and the Vale, the Reach '''and the land of Dorne' all lived under their own kings.''" This is blatantly in error. We know for a fact that Dorne was never unified under one ruler until the Rhoynar invasion, long after the Andal invasion. By extension, the entire section is more of a gloss about that happened to Westeros "between the Long Night and the Targaryen Conquest", and should have been reworded more properly.--The Dragon Demands 21:08, June 25, 2012 (UTC) :I do concede that the "Leaders" section shoud remain as Gonzalo84 has put it, as "House Gardener" or "the Mountain Kings" did exist at this time...though not as leaders of "the Kingdom of the Reach", which didn't exist yet. Thus I would change "King of the Reach" to say "House Gardener" etc.--The Dragon Demands 21:10, June 25, 2012 (UTC) Attempting to clear this up From the novels, the situation is that certain houses were formed very early on: House Stark during the Long Night 8,000 years ago, the Arryns during the initial stages of the Andal Invasion (6,000 years ago), the Lannisters shortly afterwards etc. These houses were powerful, but merely the most powerful amongst many houses. The Boltons were not fully subdued under the Starks until 1,000-odd years ago, and were still rebelling regularly for centuries after that. There were also Darklyn kings in Duskendale, lots of feuding lords on Crackclaw Point all calling themselves kings and, most notably, dozens of tiny feuding fiefdoms covering Dorne. The Brackens and Blackwoods were also kings at the time of the Andal invasion, both of their own little corners of Westeros and also both unifying the Riverlands under them for a time until other houses became more powerful (including the Mudds, who ruled as Kings of the Riverlands for centuries before being wiped out by the Storm King). So the overall picture is one of confusion, with little hard facts outside the fact that it was a bit of a free-for-all until the 'Seven Kingdoms' (the North, the Vale, the Westerlands, the Iron Islands/Riverlands, the Stormlands, the Reach and Dorne) were conquered by Aegon. GRRM has even said that the term refers to the fact that there just happened to be seven kingdoms at the moment Aegon invaded, not that there was any permanent value to these kingdoms. The issue, as with all things on the Wiki, is that whilst the above is true for the books, it may not the case for the TV series (and, to reiterate, our first POV should be that the books do not exist, and only use them for additional 'In the books' trivia, never as the basis of main body text in articles). Cogman and the writers may well have chosen to radically simplify the backstory and history to iron out the complexities that GRRM prefers to have in place in the books.--Werthead 22:06, June 25, 2012 (UTC) Well okay I will abide by this decision. But it might be a good idea to send another e-mail to HBO to confirm if this was their actual intention, or an error through condensation in the Viewer's Guide that needs to be updated. It doesn't hurt to ask. Though my point about what I said of the Baratheons stands; I was referring to their current ethnicity, not that they existed as a House during the Andal Invasion. --The Dragon Demands 22:47, June 25, 2012 (UTC) :The "Complete Guide to Westeros: The Age of Heroes" featurette" has Bran Stark say that when Aegon Targaryen conquered Westeros, he had to face Seven Kingdoms "which had been established by the First Men, thousands of years before"....so it would appear that the TV-verse got this mixed up and thinks the "Seven Kingdoms" were made by the First Men, not the Andals. In this case, we *really* need to contact HBO or Bryan Cogman to double-check if they truly intend this as a simplification, or if it is an accidental error which they would retract if we pointed it out.--The Dragon Demands 23:22, June 27, 2012 (UTC) ::Some of the Kingdoms were established during the Age of the First Men, but later expanded via conquest. For example the "Kingdom of the Storm Kings" (since the Storm Kings date to the Age of Heroes)... or the Kingdom of the North centuries later annexed Bear Island, and at some other moment annexed the Neck from the Marsh King. The Grey King was King of the Iron Islands.--Gonzalo84 00:42, June 28, 2012 (UTC) :::Well that's kind of the point. The Starks started out as the Kings of Winterfell, essentially. Today "the North" includes Bear Island, while thousands of years ago it did not. I mean, in the thirteen century, "France" was just a narrow strip around Paris wedged between a "Germany" that included Lorraine, and the Angevin Empire which controlled the coast from Normandy to Gascony. Leon, Castile, Aragon, Catalonia, and Navarre aren't just "proto-Spain" but independent kingdoms in their own right that later go absorbed as the big dogs ate the little dogs.--The Dragon Demands 01:12, June 28, 2012 (UTC)